اللغات

Saudi Arabia

A Saudi couple tortured their Sri Lankan maid by hammering 24 nails into her hands, legs and forehead, after she complained of a too heavy workload, officials said today. Nearly 2 million Sri Lankans sought employment overseas last year and around 1.4 million, mostly maids, were employed in the Middle East. Many have complained of physical abuse or harassment. LT Ariyawathi, a 49-year old mother of three, returned home on Friday after five months in Saudi Arabia.

Far from calling the Saudi king on his awful record on human rights and women’s issues, the president is pushing a huge arms deal and heaping praise on the monarch. He’s not only continuing Bush’s soft Saudi policy—he’s surpassing it. In the next two months, Congress will be asked to give formal approval to a staggering new arms deal with Saudi Arabia. Valued at $30 billion, the deal includes selling the Saudis state-of-the-art missile technology, jets, ships, and helicopters. “Saudi is a key country for us and we continue to work hard,” Navy Vice Admiral Jeffrey Wieringa, director of the U.S. agency that oversees foreign military sales, said last month.

Want to know whether your wife, sister or daughter has left the county? Well, in Saudi Arabia, there's an app for that. Reportedly, male guardians or mahrams in Saudi Arabia are now receiving text message notifications when their female charges leave the country unaccompanied. "iMahram", a friend of mine jokingly called it. According to Wajeha al-Huwaider, a Saudi female activist, when she left the kingdom for a holiday with her family, her husband received a text message from the foreign ministry notifying him that she had departed.

The Hadi al-Mutif Program for Human Rights at the Institute for Gulf Affairs is launching a multi-year international campaign this week to raise awareness on the status of women in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s worst violators of women’s rights, as the state declares women legally inferior to men.

Dear Mr. President, Allow me to introduce myself: I am Wajeha Al-Huwaider, Saudi writer and women’s rights activist in the Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia. When you meet with King Abdullah Bin Abdul-Aziz next week, we kindly request that you bring to his majesty’s attention the issue of reforming the Saudi male guardianship system.

Many were stunned when Saudi cleric Sheik Abdel Mohsen Obeikan recently issued a fatwa, or Islamic ruling, calling on women to give breast milk to their male colleagues or men they come into regular contact with so as to avoid illicit mixing between the sexes. But a group of Saudi women has taken the controversial decree a step further in a new campaign to gain the right to drive in the ultra-conservative kingdom, media reports say. If they're not granted the right to drive, the women are threatening to breastfeed their drivers to establish a symbolic maternal bond.

On 17 February 2010, after four years of separation, Fatima Bent Suleiman, Mansour El Timani and their children were finally reunited following a decision by the Supreme Judiciary Council to overturn their forced divorce. Fatima’s marriage had been approved by Fatima’s father in 2003, but after his death her half-brothers petitioned for her divorce on the grounds of her tribal incompatibility with her husband. Fatima believes one reason for this was to enable her half-brothers through legal guardianship to retain control over her inheritance. The couple refused to accept the judgment, was forced to live apart and suffered considerable hardships and trauma. In February 2009, Equality Now issued Women’s Action 31.1 calling on the Saudi Government to end the practice of male guardianship over women and reunite Fatima, Mansour and their children as a family. In September 2009, following months of advocacy, King Abdullah ordered the Saudi Supreme Judiciary Council to re-examine the decision of the General Court of Jof, which had ordered the couple to be forcibly divorced.

In an unprecedented outburst toward Saudi Arabia's religious police, a married woman shot at several officers in a patrol car after she was caught in an "illegal seclusion" with another man in the province of Ha'il on Tuesday. "She shot at the officers to distract them and allow the man to escape instant detention," said Sheik Mutlak al Nabet, a spokesman for the religious police in Ha'il. He added that the unnamed woman's husband has filed an official report, asking for his wife to be punished and stripped of her Saudi nationality.